Exercise 5

 

Exer­cise 5

Due: (TBA)
500 words (min­i­mum)
10 points; see gen­eral cri­te­ria.
Media: include image doc­u­ment­ing detail (“mate­r­ial sig­ni­fier”) or express­ing choral mood (atmos­phere, link, gap, etc.)
» Extra credit (optional): Cre­ate com­pos­ite image, sig­ni­fier pat­terns from Pop­cy­cle (2 or more dimen­sions); com­pose as per­sonal emblem (impresa); draft form acceptable.

 
» Addi­tional tips below (plus, review any instances of “pop­cy­cle” or “mys­tory” chap­ters 5–6)

 
 

» Prompt

Assign­ment (from Elec­tronic Mon­u­ments)

“Pop­cy­cle Link­ing“
 
» Attempt an ini­tial “prac­ti­cal pro­ce­dure for a mys­tory, applied to some fea­tures of the career and fam­ily quar­ters of the pop­cy­cle. Use the pro­ce­dure as a means to con­nect any selec­tion of doc­u­ments from the two dis­courses.”
→ “The assign­ment is to find the point of con­duc­tion (elec­trate infer­ence) where the two series cross.” (p.183)
 

• “To write an intu­ition […] is not to rec­og­nize a pat­tern but to make one. And this pat­tern for­ma­tion func­tions in chor­ag­ra­phy the way con­cepts func­tioned in lit­er­acy, deter­min­ing how par­tic­u­lars are gath­ered into sets for clas­si­fi­ca­tion and cat­e­go­riza­tion.” (p.188)
   
  • First, con­sider how you clas­sify / cat­e­go­rize the details of your pop­cy­cle mate­ri­als, how items in your “per­sonal data­base” are presently sorted.
    → What is the “mood of thought” of the link between the two dimen­sions, evoked in the pat­tern rec­og­nized?
     

  • Addi­tion­ally con­sider: “What dis­tin­guishes this pro­ce­dure is not the gap fill­ing, since inter­ro­ga­tion also has been described as a gap or hole opened by a ques­tion that is then filled by an answer” (183). Rather than “fill the gap” by account­ing for (explain­ing, inter­pret­ing) the pop­cy­cle con­nec­tion of the pat­tern, “open a gap your­self in the infor­ma­tion you have gath­ered so far”…”a gap in sig­ni­fi­ca­tion that may pro­duce knowl­edge” (184).
    In other words, what exists in the gap/hole between, which is not accounted for? Iden­tify this in terms of your expe­ri­ence, not by fil­ter­ing but by includ­ing (chora logic = gath­er­ing) — the “blindspot” or uncat­e­go­rized aspect is also part of the pop­cy­cle, of which you should rec­og­nize at least one spe­cific instance.
     

 
 

» Goal: Find your reflex­ive “attune­ment” (“mood of thought,” stance) grounded in expe­ri­ence through chora logic (holis­tic gath­er­ing ver­sus ratio­nal fil­ter­ing). Rec­og­nize an “image motif” for your (even­tual) emblem through the pat­tern that appears in your pop­cy­cle — across dis­courses, in con­crete forms (sig­ni­fiers, images, instances), pos­si­bly in mul­ti­ple modes.
This view, start­ing with the family/autobio. and career dimen­sions, should enable con­nec­tions (via “con­duc­tion”) with the other dimen­sions as well, con­se­quently — com­mu­nity and entertainment/culture (with their respec­tive lan­guages, codes, and references).

 

 

» Task: Most impor­tantly, thor­oughly exam­ine with the reflex­ive per­spec­tive instructed. Present your “dis­cov­er­ies” (insights) in a propo­si­tional fash­ion, not need­ing to worry about argument/proof; rather, address each prompt with poten­tial (rather than def­i­nite) answers as an exer­cise in the type of think­ing Ulmer instructs. The main objec­tive is to demon­strate, through your “find­ings,” reflex­ive pop­cy­cle con­sid­er­a­tion and applied choral logic: omit descrip­tions of the process in favor of specif­i­cally pre­sent­ing the result­ing ideas in pre­cise and con­cise fash­ion.
Finally, fol­low the instruc­tions closely as prompt instructs a delib­er­ate sequence: essen­tial to the­o­rize your attune­ment (“mood of thought”), relat­ing your stance (dis­po­si­tion) to your object of study (career / school); do not for­get to artic­u­late (pro­vi­sion­ally) ideas about what exists in the “gap” or “blindspot,” which remains part of your popcycle.

 

 

 
 

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Optional Exer­cise

Due:
500 words (min­i­mum; 800 max­i­mum)
» Media: one instance, any form (image, audio, video, ani­ma­tion) — original/custom (edited), expres­sive mode (con­vey­ing “mood of thought”)
 
* Note: feel free to share in Google Docs (or email) if pre­fer­ring not to post to your blog.

Assign­ment (Elec­tronic Mon­u­ments):
• Write a Dis­as­ter (middle-voice mem­ory, expe­ri­enced; pas­tiche)
   
  » “com­pose a pas­tiche of Blanchot’s pri­mal scene, writ­ing your own ver­sion of a moment of rev­e­la­tion you may find in a child­hood mem­ory. What were the cir­cum­stances of a scene in which you passed from the imme­di­acy of daily liv­ing into a con­di­tion of self-awareness, a recog­ni­tion of your own apart­ness and iso­la­tion from every other being?” (pp.143–4)
  • The objec­tive in com­pos­ing this frag­ment is to evoke the atmos­phere of the scene, recall­ing the mood of the epiphany (affective-intellectual con­di­tion). This is less a nar­ra­tive than a glimpse, serv­ing to recall and express the “mood of thought” via the con­crete details of the child­hood scene (thus, sen­sory details are paramount). 
  • see Blanchot’s quote pp. 138–9; Ulmer’s exam­ple pp. 144–5 (model this style of writing)